Cellar Rat: Week Four at Unti Vineyards
By Ella Lawrence
After a month of winemaking, I suddenly have enough energy to do other things besides tumble into bed after throwing my sweaty, grape skin-smeared clothes into the washing machine and preparing a slapshod dinner that usually involves chips, salsa and beer.
This is giving me more time for learning more about what’s going on at the winery: when not expending every last ounce of energy (and then some) on heavy lifting and deep cleaning, I’ve got brain cells left over for doing stuff like plotting graphs that track the fermentation of the grapes from beginning to end.
First thing in the morning and last thing at night, right after punchdowns (which have also become easier--I can now lift that giant stainless-steel paddle with one hand!), we take readings of brix (sugar levels) and temperature. These points are plotted on the same graph for each lot (each load of grapes that is picked at any given time), so there is a black line descending (sugar levels, which lower as the yeasts convert the sugars in the grape juice to alcohol) and a red line ascending (temperature: fermentation makes the wine hot).
Having extra energy left over also gives me more time to focus on lunch, which is the highlight of the day for everyone, I think. We usually take at least an hour, and everyone in the winery sits together on three wooden picnic tables surrounded by lavender and rosemary bushes. The Unti crew consists of:
-Five vineyard workers who are employed year round. Filiberto is the senior worker, he’s been with Unti since it opened 13 years ago. I used to work with one of his daughters at Charlie Palmer’s Dry Creek Kitchen--she was my favorite busser of all time. The other four vineyard guys are somehow related to Filiberto, and none of them speaks much English. However, everyone that works at Unti is fluent--or nearly fluent--in Spanish.
-The vineyard manager (Levi), who is my age and also grew up in Healdsburg.
-His wife (Katie), who works in the tasting room.
-The bookkeeper (Diane)
-The two winery owners (a father and son; George and Mick Unti)
-The winemaker (Sebastien), me, and sometimes one other person who is helping in the cellar (Tony Unti, Mike, or Kevin).
On days we crush, someone (usually Levi, who starts work when the sun comes up and finishes when it’s too hot to pick any more, usually around 10:30 or 11am) takes a poll on what everyone wants for lunch and heads into town for the order, which often comes from the Dry Creek General Store; a place that’s been here since 1881, and which sold groceries to families (including mine) during the Depression on credit. Someone brings out a bottle of wine, or two, and we sit around and talk about totally geeky stuff, like the way the owner of Santi didn’t know that the La Terrazze Sassi Neri I ordered on Tuesday was made from Montepulciano; telling me Sassi Neri was an indigenous varietal to Italy, “kind of a cross between a Cabernet Sauvignon and a Zinfandel.” This provoked Kevin (A16’s sommelier) so much that he turned white, called it a ‘travesty’ and suggested that I pen a story titled, “The Dangers of Drinking Italian Wine Outside of A16.”
After lunch, we’re usually in some kind of red meat and red wine coma, so we take it easier in the afternoon. After shoveling out one of the medium-sized tanks, I was put in charge of running the press while Sebastien did some work in the office. I asked him what to do and he said, “Well, first you push this button. Then you stand here and you look very concentrated. After a while, you put this wine glass under the stream of wine coming out and you taste it. You make a face like you are thinking very, very hard. Then you push the button again.”
He pushed the controls to the heavy piece of equipment into my hand and walked off, whistling. I hope I get to learn how to drive the forklift next week.
(Check back next Friday for the next installment of Ella Lawrence's Unti Vineyard Chronicles.)
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